July Blogging Challenge - Visible Thinking

Yesterday's post about my blank bulletin board has me thinking more and more about how do I make thinking visible in my classroom.  If someone were to come in my room during class, I want to think that they would see evidence of student learning, but what if you came in after school or between classes?  Rarely would you see physical evidence of our hard work and that bothers me a lot.  I know that in my 180 blog, I captured evidence of in-class thinking, but what more can I do to reach ALL students?

When thinking is visible in classrooms, students are in a position to be more metacognitive, to think about their thinking. When thinking is visible, it becomes clear that school is not about memorizing content but exploring ideas. Teachers benefit when they can see students' thinking because misconceptions, prior knowledge, reasoning ability, and degrees of understanding are more likely to be uncovered. Teachers can then address these challenges and extend students' thinking by starting from where they are.

I ran across the above quote today while doing a Google search on 'Visible Thinking.'  You can read the entire document here. 

I have a lot of routines and structures in my class.  Kids know what to do when they are absent, where papers are turned in, where extra handouts are located, etc.  I have a lot of management routines, but I don't have a lot of thinking routines in place.  From the document linked above:

What makes them routines, versus merely strategies, is that they get used over and over gain in the classroom so that they become part of the fabric of classroom' culture. The routines become the ways in which students go about the process of learning.

I need routines in place that I can use over and over again, that are quick and easy to teach and implement, and that enhance the lesson. 

One of the July Bloggers, Robyn of Making Math Visible has also been posting on this topic.  Read her posts:  Post 1;  Post 2;  Post 3

What 'Thinking Routines' do you use in your classroom? 

July Challenge
I am on a personal challenge to blog every day in July, just to see if I can do it. I would love to have you join me! If you are worried that you've missed a few days, please don't stress.. just jump on in! Maybe a month is too much, that's okay, try it for a week, or every other day, or once a week.. whatever works for you!

Don't forget to visit the other July bloggers and show them some love!
The bloggers (so far)
Robin at Flip! Learn! Share
Bridget at Reflections in the Plane
Teresa at GeometryWiz
Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules!
Brooke at Sined, Sealed, Calculated
John at Functions are Fun
Jedidiah at Math Butler
Pam at the radical rational
Roxy at Rockstar Math Teacher
Paul at TeacherPaulP
Tina at Palmer's Ponderings
Cindy at School Stuff
Robyn at Making Math Visible
Shelley at Making Math Visual

Add your blog in the comments if you would like to join in! :)
#July2014Challenge